O Pope Francis said, this Wednesday (14), that God does not guide religions to war, an implicit criticism of the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Cyril I which supports the invasion of Ukraine and boycotted a conference of religious leaders.
On his second day in Kazakhstan, Francis addressed the Seventh Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, a gathering that brings together Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and members of other faiths.
Cyril I should have attended, but withdrew. The Russian Orthodox Church sent a delegation headed by its number two, Metropolitan Anthony, who later met briefly with the pope.
“God is peace. He always guides us on the path of peace, never on the path of war,” Francis said, speaking at an enormous round table in the Independence Palace, a massive, modern structure made of steel and glass in the capital of the former Soviet republic.
“Let us, then, commit ourselves even more to insisting on the need to resolve conflicts not by the inconclusive means of power, with weapons and threats, but by the only means blessed by heaven and worthy of man: meeting, dialogue and patient negotiations,” he said. .
The pontiff, who earlier this year said that Cyril I could not be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “altar boy”, told the conference: “The sacred must never be a support for power, nor power a support for the sacred!”.
Cyril I enthusiastically supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which the patriarch sees as a bulwark against a West he calls decadent.
Meeting between pope and patriarch still possible
The patriarch’s stance caused a rupture with the Vatican and triggered an internal rebellion that led to the severing of ties of some local Orthodox Churches with the Russian Orthodox Church.
Metropolitan Anthony told the press that his meeting with the pope was “very cordial” but said Francis’ comment on Cyril I “was not helpful for Christian unity” and that it surprised the Russian Orthodox Church.
Anthony said the pope told him he wanted to have a second meeting with Cyril I. The first was in Cuba in 2016.
Francis also said that while violence in the name of God is never justified, the “viruses” of hate and terrorism will not be eradicated without first eliminating injustice and poverty.
He said that religious freedom is essential for peaceful coexistence in any society and no creed has the right to coerce others to convert.
“It’s time to realize that fundamentalism contaminates and corrupts all creeds,” he said. “Let us free ourselves from these reductive and destructive notions that offend the name of God through harshness, extremism and forms of fundamentalism, and desecrate it through hatred, fanaticism and terrorism, also disfiguring the image of man”.
But just condemning extremism was not enough.
“As long as inequality and injustice continue to proliferate, there will be no end to viruses even worse than Covid: the viruses of hate, violence and terrorism,” he said.
Francis, who wrote a document in 2015 on the need to protect the environment, said religious leaders need to be on the front lines to draw attention to the dangers of climate change and extreme weather, particularly its effects on the poor and the poor. society’s vulnerable.
About 70% of Kazakhs are Muslims and about 26% are Orthodox Christians. There are only about 125,000 Catholics among the 19 million people in the vast Central Asian country.
Francis will say a mass for the small Catholic community on Wednesday afternoon.
(Edited by Michael Perry and Alex Richardson)
Source: CNN Brasil
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